Cuban State Security Detains Journalist Yoani Sanchez
and returns her home with a ban on leaving
Authorities enforce the warning to prevent attendance at a reception at the residence of the US Chief of Mission, Mike Hammer.
HAVANA TIMES — Yoani Sanchez, director of 14ymedio, was detained this Wednesday in the middle of the street to prevent her from attending a reception at the residence of the US chief of mission in Havana, Mike Hammer. Her husband and a columnist for this outlet, Reinaldo Escobar, exited the building through another door, but was also stopped by two State Security agents in civilian clothes and forced to return.
Followed for several minutes by an agent about 25 years old, without a uniform and with his face partially covered, Sanchez managed to communicate with the newsroom in Madrid to explain what was happening. The young man called her by name, and she asked him to identify himself, saying she did not know who he was, to which he did not respond. Instead, he made a phone call to what appeared to be a patrol or other agents, requesting backup.
However, he could not determine exactly where he was in order to provide them with the location. It is well known that the Ministry of the Interior often assigns personnel brought in from other provinces, especially from the eastern part of the island, to the capital, and in many cases they are unfamiliar with the city.
At the intersection of Ayestarán Avenue and First Street, in the Plaza de la Revolución municipality, the director of 14ymedio stopped walking and was then approached by the man who had been following her and three other people who caught up with them—one man and two women.
Both men showed Sanchez an ID card bearing the initials DSE (Department of State Security), but the women never identified themselves. Once there, they told her that she had to walk back home, “perhaps because they have no gasoline,” the journalist speculated, and that she could not go out “until tomorrow.”
All four escorted Sanchez to the ground floor of her building. The agents made it clear that the reason for the operation was to prevent both journalists from reaching the reception convened by the US chief of mission. “Of course she was going there, where else would she be going,” the director of this newspaper heard one agent say to another.
The event to which both Sanchez and Escobar had been invited marked the start of the celebrations for the 250th anniversary of the United States, this very Wednesday at 5:00 p.m. at Hammer’s residence, located in the Playa municipality. The special guest of the evening is Rob Allison, the coordinator for Cuba affairs at the US Department of State.
Last Friday, State Security detained the director of the Convivencia Studies Center, Dagoberto Valdes, and his colleague Yoandy Izquierdo in Pinar del Río. Both were held and interrogated for several hours in an operation led by Majors Ernesto and Manuel, both officers of the political police, who acknowledged that the arrests were motivated by Valdes’s recent visit to Hammer.
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.